<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta name="copyright" content=
  "Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2011. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page.">
  <meta charset="utf-8"/>
  <link rel="STYLESHEET" href="../book.css" type="text/css">
  <title>Editors and the Editor Area</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1 class="Head">Editors</h1>
  <p>Most perspectives in the Workbench are comprised of an editor area and one or more views.</p>
  <p>You can associate different editors with different types of files. For example, when you open a file for editing
  by double-clicking it in one of the navigation views, the associated editor opens in the Workbench. If there is no
  associated editor for a resource, the Workbench attempts to launch an <i>external editor</i> outside the Workbench.
  (On Windows, the Workbench will first attempt to launch the editor in place as an OLE document. This type of editor
  is referred to as an <i>embedded editor</i>. For example, if you have a .doc file in the Workbench and Microsoft Word
  is registered as the editor for .doc files in your operating system, then opening the file will launch Word as an OLE
  document within the Workbench editor area. The Workbench menu bar and toolbar will be updated with options for
  Microsoft Word.)</p>
  <p>Any number of editors can be open at once, but only one can be active at a time. The main menu bar and toolbar for
  the Workbench window contain operations that are applicable to the active editor.</p>
  <p>Tabs in the editor area indicate the names of resources that are currently open for editing. An asterisk (*)
  indicates that an editor has unsaved changes.</p>
  <p>By default, editors are stacked in the editor area, but you can choose to tile them in order to view source files
  simultaneously.</p>
  <p>Here is an example of a text editor in the Workbench:</p>
  <p><img src="../images/Image5_text_editor.png" alt="Text editor" border="0" width="800"></p>
  <p>The gray border at the left margin of the editor area may contain icons that flag errors, warnings, or problems
  detected by the system. Icons also appear if you have created bookmarks, added breakpoints for debugging, or recorded
  notes in the Tasks view. You can view details for any icons in the left margin of the editor by moving the mouse
  cursor over them.</p>
  <h3 class="related">Related Concepts</h3><a href="concepts-2.htm">Workbench</a><br>
  <a href="concepts-6a.htm">External editors</a><br>
  <a href="cbookmrk.htm">Bookmarks</a><br>
  <a href="ctskview.htm">Tasks view</a><br>
  <a href="../reference/ref-27.htm">Project Explorer view</a><br>
  <h3 class="related">Related Tasks</h3><a href="../tasks/tasks-46.htm">Opening files for editing</a><br>
  <a href="../tasks/tasks-51.xhtml">Associating editors with file types</a><br>
  <a href="../tasks/tasks-52.htm">Editing files outside the Workbench</a>
</body>
</html>
